Are you ready? Here we go.
To be “open” to something is to acknowledge that your mind is considering new ways and options of thinking. We often use the phrase “open minded.” We consider such a person to be a broad thinker and willing to be tolerant of opposing or unknown areas. A think-er is not always a do-er.
Open-ness is not necessarily eager-ness. With eager comes a kind of desire that pushes you into action. Not just an open-handed consideration, but an eager desire that needs to be acted on.
Now compare being eager to being desperate. Desperation is a driving force that must be completed, satisfied, answered. Acts of desperation are done without regard to personal cost.
Now then. Which are you— open, eager, desperate— when asking for God’s gifts, His spiritual gifts?
1 Corinthians 14:1 talks about following the way of love and eagerly, jealously, ardently desiring the works of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Paul said many times that we are to want all the gifts that God has for us, and to do that in a desperate, driven, longing for fulfillment kind of way.
So, how much of God do you want?
Desperate…eager, It goes back and forth, back and forth, but when I really sit down and think and pray and come into the presence of my Daddy-God I’m always desperate.